1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information communication system, an information communication device, an information communication method, and a computer program for performing data communication with a device provided with a data communication function, such as an IC card, and particularly to an information communication system, an information communication device, an information communication method, and a computer program for performing data communication with a device provided with a plurality of data communication functions having technical standards different from each other.
2. Related Art
A contactless proximity communication system typified by an integrated circuit (IC) card has been widely popularized because of its simplicity and convenience. In the proximity communication system applying the IC card, by putting the IC card close to a radio frequency (RF) field (magnetic field) caused by an electromagnetic wave generated by a card read/write device, the IC card is driven with power obtained by electromagnetic induction so as to be allowed to communicate data with the card read/write device (see, for example, JP-A-10-13312). The proximity communication denotes the communication, which is made possible when the distance between the devices to communicate with each other becomes shorter than several tens of centimeters, and includes the communication performed by bringing the housings of the devices into contact with each other.
According to a typical usage of an IC card, the user can use the IC card by holding it above the card read/write device. The card read/write device is always polling the IC card, and a communication operation between both sides is started when it detects an external IC card. For example, by storing a private code or other personal authentication information, or value information such as an electronic ticket in the IC card, an authentication process of visitors or passengers can be performed at a cash dispenser, a gate of a concert venue, or a ticket wicket of a station. According to the IC card technology, the IC card is difficult to copy or tamper with the stored information, namely, it is provided with tamper-resistance, and the proximity communication can realize a high level of security.
It is possible to configure an IC chip provided with the contactless IC card function with a single chip including an RF analog front-end and a logic circuit (protocol control, RF modem, command processing, encryption processing, and memory management), or with two or more IC chips separately including these circuits. In the present specification, these are simply denoted as an IC card in some cases as a collective term.
Further, in accordance with enhancement of the miniaturization technology, an IC card with a relatively large-capacity memory has appeared. According to the IC card with a large-capacity memory, it is possible to develop a file system on the memory space to store a plurality of applications at the same time. For example, by previously storing a plurality of applications such as electronic money for performing electronic payment or an electronic ticket for getting admittance to a specific concert venue on one IC card, it becomes possible to make the one IC card to be applied to various usages. It should be noted that the electronic money and the electronic ticket mentioned here denote a mechanism, which performs payment (electronic payment) through electronic data issued according to a fund provided by the user, or the electronic data itself.
Although IC cards have been spreading rapidly and widely, there has been provided various sorts of different IC card interface standards by card vender companies, which produce and distribute IC cards or card read/write devices. Therefore, a problem of mixing a plurality of interface standards arises. For example, as presently practiced IC card system standards, those called a type A or a type B can be cited.
It should be noted here that in the type A, a data transfer rate of 106 kbps is used, a data encoding method of Miller is applied to the data transfer from the card read/write device to the IC card, and a data encoding method of Manchester is applied to the data transfer from the IC card to the card read/write device, respectively. The type A is adopted by, for example, a Mifare system of Royal Philips Electronics in Netherlands. Further, in the type B, a data transfer rate of 106 kbps is used, a data encoding method of NRZ is applied to the data transfer from the card read/write device to the IC card, and a data encoding method of NRZ-L is applied to the data transfer from the IC card to the card read/write device, respectively. Still further, in a contactless IC card system “FeliCa” (Registered Trademark) of Sony Corporation, a data transfer rate of 212 kbps is used, and the data transfer between the IC card and the card read/write device is performed with the data encoding method of Manchester.
In these times, a short range wireless communication technology having compatibility with a plurality of contactless IC card interfaces with different physical layers has also appeared. For example, the near field communication (NFC) is a short range wireless communication technology jointly developed by Sony Corporation and Royal Philips Electronics in Netherlands, which uses the same frequency band of 13.56 MHz as contactless IC cards, and has compatibility in the physical layer of the communication with both the contactless IC card system “FeliCa” (Registered Trademark) proposed by Sony Corporation and the system “Mifare” (Registered Trademark), which is proposed by Philips, and which is becoming popularized in Europe and the United States. A card read/write device equipped with a transmitter/receiver compatible with the NFC can exchange data with “Suica” (Registered Trademark) of East Japan Railway Company and prepaid electronic money “Edy” (Registered Trademark) of bitWallet adopting the FeliCa system. In accordance with the increase in the number of users of Suica or Edy, an increase in the need for cellular phones capable of confirming the balance of the card or personal computers capable of paying for merchandises purchased through the Internet with Edy can be expected. The NFC is approved as an international standard “ISO/IEC 18092.”
Further, an IC card is hitherto issued independently for every business entity, which is a service providing source, and the user is required to prepare the IC card for every service the user wants to use and to bring the IC card therewith. On the contrary, according to an IC card having a relatively large capacity of memory space, it becomes possible to prepare a sufficient amount of capacity for recording information relating to a plurality of services in a built-in memory of a single IC card (see, for example, “The A to Z of IC Tags, Sesame Tip Changes Business” (pp. 106-107, edited by RFID Technology editorial desk, published on Apr. 20, 2004 by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc.)).
By assigning a file system for a certain service providing source business entity in a built-in memory of an IC card to manage the information (e.g., identification or authentication information of the user, remaining value information, or usage history (logs)) for the operation of the service offered by the business entity in the file system, an advantageous service based on contactless and proximity communication capable of replacing the prepaid card or the service card for every outlet in the related art can be realized.
Although the whole of the memory area in the IC card is managed by the issuer of the IC card in the initial state, the service providing source business entity other than the issuer of the IC card divides the memory area to create a new file system to be assigned to an application for operating each service. Division of the file system corresponds to issuance of a virtual IC card. By repeating the dividing operation, the memory area in the IC card becomes to have a structure including a plurality of coexisting file systems, and it becomes possible to provide multiple applications, namely a wide variety of application services with a single IC card (see, for example, JP-A-2005-196409).
According to the increase in the memory size of the IC card, a plurality of application services can be implemented in one IC card. Accordingly, the card read/write device (or an apparatus implementing the read/write device) is required to support a plurality of application services. The card read/write device having compatibility with a plurality of physical layers by utilizing the NFC technology described above, which allows the coexistence of a plurality of types of contactless IC cards, is assumed to be required to support all of the application services provided by respective physical layers.
In general, each of the application services has a data structure unique to every service business entity, and the data structure often remains unpublicized from the viewpoint of security. Therefore, a new problem arises that it is difficult for the card read/write device compatible with the NFC to start data transaction even if it can identify the physical layer of the IC card detected by itself, and it is required to recognize the application services implemented in the IC card.
Although the data management method is different among the application services, it can also be configured so that an application in the side of the card read/write device detects the data structure of each of the technical standards.
For example, in the case in which the application service implemented in the IC card is FeliCa, which one of the type A, the type B of the contactless IC card compliant to the ISO/IEC 14443, or FeliCa is the card can be identified by a polling command having a mechanism for collision avoidance. It should be noted here that the application service can be identified by further referring to the system code and the service code at the stage in which it is turned out to be FeliCa. Further, even in another case than the case with FeliCa, there is a mechanism for similarly judging the application service in the IC card. For example, in the case with Mifare in which data of the Mifare application directory (MAD) exists, the application service can be judged by referring to the data.
However, if it is configured so that the application in the side of the card read/write device recognizes the data structure of each of the standards each time as described above, the software might be bloated.
Further, although a method in which the user having the IC card therewith designates the application to the card read/write device when using the card can also be considered, it requires the user to confirm the type of the application service of the IC card owned by the user, which is troublesome for the user. Further, apart from a cellular phone capable of displaying information, in the case of a typical card type, the user is required to memorize which one of the technical standards the card belongs to, which is not user-friendly.